Additional Targeting Penalty?

I am all for having penalties like this.

That said, they have failed utterly in what they’ve created. They’ve created a penalty that is only ever called on the defense. Doesn’t matter if the offensive player moves at the last second. It’s still considered the defensive player’s fault. That’s just stupid. That’s just asking for offensive players to abuse it.

They should also be penalizing running backs who use their helmet just as often as they penalize defensive players. And like the tweet says, there should be different levels of the penalty.

 
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The last line of the tweet is important.  They need to distinguish between an incidental event that happens in the game and something malicious.  I'm all for penalizing something malicious even if it's an ejection.  Too many of these penalties though are unavoidable by the player that gets penalized.

 
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Given that targeting is so inconsistently and subjectively applied, they should work on making the judgments more consistent before increasing the penalties. Some teams are going to have their seasons royally jacked up when a star player gets suspended for an entire game while other teams will sometimes not get penalized at all for the same thing.

 
Moiraine said:
I am all for having penalties like this.

That said, they have failed utterly in what they’ve created. They’ve created a penalty that is only ever called on the defense. Doesn’t matter if the offensive player moves at the last second. It’s still considered the defensive player’s fault. That’s just stupid. That’s just asking for offensive players to abuse it.

They should also be penalizing running backs who use their helmet just as often as they penalize defensive players. And like the tweet says, there should be different levels of the penalty.
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100% this and it drives me crazy that its almost never brought up. If a 220 pound rb runs untouched throw the first two levels of the defense and trucks a defensive back by stick the crown of his helmet in his face mask that should absolutely be a penalty if this was about fairness and safety. 

 
these calls will be made in live games........who decides what is intentional and accidental ?  is there any avenue for further review by unbiased officials?

 
Hunter94 said:
these calls will be made in live games........who decides what is intentional and accidental ?  is there any avenue for further review by unbiased officials?
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Despite the intent, I think it's going to create more gray area, but think I get the concept and it'll probably be decided by officials on the field or back in some review booth. The accidental will be akin to a defensive player trying to avoid the contact and/or the offensive player moving their body in a way prior to the contact to initiate targeting.

Intentional will be if the defensive player could've reasonably avoided it and/or the offensive player was defenseless.

Either way, again, I think it's one more confusing thing that's ultimately going to penalize the hell out of defenders and give offenses even more power.

 
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College Football: "Hey, NCAA, targeting isnt black and white.  There are special circumstances on every flag.  All officials are different and judge it in contrasting ways.  It should be more lenient if they deem it accidental.  So far this rule has hindered the game to infuriating levels."

NCAA: "HARSHER PUNISHMENT LOLZ"

College Football:  "Why though?!"

NCAA:  "YOLO"

 
The amount of "targeting" calls (nowadays about half of the time) that get called when the receiver ducks down to lower his pad level and the defender strikes the lowered head of the receiver makes this whole rule a joke.

You may as well hand games to offenses when you are asking a defender to do the impossible. If the only surface area of a receiver to hit is a helmet because they themselves are falling to the ground or bracing for impact, how do you hit him? And by the way, you have a millisecond to pull back your momentum because an offensive player made their helmet where their chest and waist once was.

There are egregious times where someone will pretty clearly strike someone in the head on purpose. But the amount of "Bang Bang" plays where the defense loses a key player for an inadvertant and questionable "targeting" call makes the game harder and harder to watch. It becomes selective foul calling.

 
So instead of fixing/correcting the existing deficiencies in the targeting rule they've decided to double down on the stupid. Nice. I just hope they don't make the permanent change to no contact flag football before Frost gets the dynasty rolling.

 
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